Season 9, Episode 22: The Last Race

"The Last Race"
Episode 22
Air Date: July 7th, 2001

This episode was great and all...but in terms of the Lucas as a character....I'm kind of finding him boring....it's not that Lucas himself is boring.  I mean Michael Copon's performance is fine.....I've accepted that he delivers his lines with the excitement of a snail racing molasses and that's...fine. It's just his episodes are always centered around his racing or getting in trouble racing like here when he has to go to traffic school at the beginning of the episode after being pulled over by a police officer...again!  This episode just has too many shades of an episode they did before this season right down to Lucas taking his instructor on an impromtu joy ride when going after Nadira and some mutant!  It's like...we know...Lucas has more to his character than just racing and being this uber conceited ladies man.  Trip mentioned it in "Trip Takes a Stand" briefly at the end and it's not that his relationship with Dash is forced or uninteresting, it just once again doesn't really develop his character in the end.

Dash himself is a WAAAAYYYY more character.  Sure, it's once again a mutant criminal, but this is the first one to have ties aka a past with one of the rangers.  A later episode with do that FAR better with "Time Force Traitor" but here, it is refreshing to see once again, a mutant who isn't all bad like we saw in "Trip Takes A Stand".  Clearly, Dash isn't evil like Ransik, driven (no pun attended!) by selfish means like greed, wealth, etc.  He's a mutant who actually had a promising career as a great race car driver that even Lucas couldn't beat.  But when he was racing out in the streets, he caused a devastating accident that got him on trial and Lucas testifying against him, he was frozen like all the other mutants.  Like I said, I like the writers built not only another connection between one of the rangers and a mutant but had Lucas have a past with him.  It definitely gave the episode some depth but I just felt the resolution of Lucas and Dash's rivalry was so quick and abrupt.  Suddenly, Dash this change of heart that didn't have emotional weight in it.  So Lucas saves him from causing another tragic accident but suddenly, all is forgiven and he doesn't want revenge on Lucas anymore??? Uhhh...ok??? O_O

From there, the episode concludes in typical fashion with all 5 rangers reunite and fight a mind controlled who gets an upgrade thanks to Nadira and some random device.  It leads to a megazord fight where Lucas strikes the final blow with the Time Force Megazord when Dash recovers from the mind control mid-fight and tells Lucas he's ready to redeem himself.  The episode ends with Lucs being all reflective of Dash and his glory days as well as his driving instructor forcing his to teach him how to race! Lol  Like I said, it was a great episode story wise, it just doesn't make Lucas anymore interesting to me honestly.

Final Morph: B+